Your Stats Have a New Home

January 26, 2012

Andy Skelton

Are you addicted to checking your site stats? You are not alone. The stats dashboard has always been one of the most popular admin screens. It’s gratifying to know that people are visiting your place online.

With the WordPress.com front page evolving into a one-stop shop for posting, exploring, following and reading blogs, it seemed natural to put your blog stats there, too. Stats are becoming more and more about interacting with your readers and other bloggers.

You’ll still see your summary stats and chart on your main dashboard, and the full stats page in your dashboard will remain for a while, but the My Stats tab on the WordPress.com front page will soon become the home for the most comprehensive view of your stats. Stats will also continue to be available by clicking on the sparkline in the admin bar at the top.

While adding the My Stats tab to the front page, we also gave it an updated look by making the panels regularly spaced, using rounded gravatars for your commenters, and giving it an overall lighter feel:

We’ll be adding even more features to your stats and the WordPress.com front page soon. We’re working on adding country stats of your visitors, which many of you have requested.

If you’d like to attract more visitors to your site, check out these great resources on boosting your blog readership:

(Note to Jetpack users: Your stats will still be available in your wp-admin dashboard. However, you may still enjoy viewing your stats on WordPress.com.)

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I’m leery of this… and I’m usually a huge fan of the changes you guys make. I tend to sit on my blog’s dashboard all day, not the wordpress homepage. I like having multiple blog entries in draft at any given time so i can add to them as ideas strike me, plus be able to monitor my site stats from the same place. If I’m understand correctly, eventually you’ll migrate site stats to the homepage, which I almost never use? I’ll have to have two tabs open, when it used to be just one? That seems less simple… aka, wrong direction. But maybe I’m misunderstanding?

Hmm… I understand what you’re saying about it being a click away, and I’m going to try to reserve judgement until I play with it for awhile, but I think that taking it from being right in front of me to “Just a click away” will end up being annoying. I do get that you guys want people on your homepage, but um… give us the option to not be?

This is not a good thing. I want my stats on my dashboard, where all my other controls are. Having this on the front page as an option is alright, but I don’t want to need to travel to this page to see what my stats are. It just doesn’t make sense!!!

The summary view of your stats will continue to be on the main Dashboard. The WordPress.com home page will be where the comprehensive page of your stats lives, and where you can also post. The full stats page will still only be a click away form anywhere (via the sparkline in the admin bar or the option on the W menu at the left of the admin bar).

I agree with those who think this will be inconvenient. I want my stats on my dashboard, which IS convenient. This seems like a ploy to get more publicity for featured blogs. Can’t see any advantage at all.

There will continue to be a stats summary (currently in the right column, with a chart, top posts, search terms etc.) on your main Dashboard page. And the comprehensive stats page will be available from the sparkline or the W menu in the admin bar, always a click away from any page — that’s even closer than the Site Stats page in wp-admin.

Hmmm. Seems as if this isn’t popular, WordPress. I’ll reserve judgement till I see how it actually works but I have a feeling it’s not going to be an improvement. Pity, if that’s the case, since the things you guys do normally do make our lives easier.

Anything we change with stats generally gets a ton of negative feedback at first, it’s just something we’ve learned to get through. There are some cool new features for the homepage stats on the roadmap, though, that I think people will enjoy.

“This is not a good thing. I want my stats on my dashboard, where all my other controls are. Having this on the front page as an option is alright, but I don’t want to need to travel to this page to see what my stats are. It just doesn’t make sense!!!”

“Please keep the stats in the dashboard too. I never go to the WordPress.com home page. Thanks.”

Please do not remove Site Stats from the dashboard after you move it to the WordPress.com front page. I don’t use your front page that often and do not appreciate being driven to it. Why not give us the option of checking site stats in both places?
thanks for listening,
Sam

Because long-term the homepage gives us a lot more flexibility in developing a newer, better interface for stats (you can see they’ve been spruced up a bit already) and gives us more flexibility down the road for making them faster as well.

Any chance that the Stats will include syndicated views as well as on-site views. I’ve never been clear on why one is counted in aggregate form and the other appears only in connection with individual posts. I appreciate all the efforts WordPress makes to help its Bloggers, but it would be helpful to me to have a complete tally of page views. Thanks,

Oh, please, NO. Why do you imagine I ever go to the wordpress.com front page? That is NOT how I follow or look for blogs… I find them by web searches or recommendations, I follow them by RSS. I use my dashboard all the time; the WP front page, never. Please rethink this.

You’re right, I am obsessed with checking my stats. I do it daily. However, I don’t visit the wordpress homepage daily. I do it about weekly to visit the blogs that I follow. So, I’d prefer to keep the stats on my dashboard. I enjoy seeing the chart the moment that I enter. Please keep where I can see it as soon as I enter without any extra clicks.

I am proudly addicted to my stats page, if i see that many people visited my blog, i will be in the best of all moods for the whole day, and if no one visits my blog, then i will be in such a bad, gloomy mood all day long!! :-)..lol..

Sorry to say I have to agree with the non-likers above. With the old stats view, even on my laptop screen, I can see everything from “Referrers” to “Totals, Followers & Shares” with one minimum scroll. The same goes for the summary tables. With the new view the respective boxes are so large I have to do some major scrolling instead of having the overview of (almost) the whole page. It would be great if you could let us keep the old view in addition to the new one, including the stats graph in the admin bar.

I like being able to do everything from my Dashboard. Being “one click away” doesn’t cut it. I don’t use the WordPress home page, at all. So you are taking a tool I use several times a day and removing it from the Dashboard to the WordPress home page (which I never use). Poor usability.

You should at least consider putting it in both places. Then let people vote with their feet.

I think you guys want the bloggers focus more on the so called WordPress.com home page than our blogs and dashboard. Anyway looks like an inconvenient thing and really pathetic way to get views for your home page!

I’ll give a clear example of how this will lead to poor usability. The stats page is the first page I go to every day. From there, depending on what I see, I can post, moderate comments, reply to them, check out referring links, tweak the placement of widgets in my sidebars etc. Instead, I will have to go to the WordPress homepage. Then, if I want to take any action, you have placed an extra unnecessary step, where I will have to click on “Dashboard”, then take the action I want to. You have added an extra step for no good reason. What was the logic behind this? Driving more traffic to the homepage? Sheesh.

Sorry, but count me in as another Thumbs Down on the move of the Stats.

This stinks of an attempt to manipulate users into using the WP.com home page, which I and others do not use nearly as often as the Dashboard.

Adding a tab to MyStats on the WP.com homepage is a great idea, but removing Stats from the Dashboard makes no sense at all!

If the Dashboard was a cluttered mess, maybe, just maybe I could see a need to remove them and require a click on the Stats graph in the Admin Bar, but since the Dashboard is fine I really hate this move.

Seems to me it would be nice to be consulted BEFORE the fact occasionally on issues of this sort. WP’s a good blog host, but it’s not the only one available, so if the not-announced-before-after-the-fact changes accumulate to eventually out-weigh the WP edges when the original decision was made to go with WP, I suppose migrating somewhere else will always be an option.

I’m not overjoyed by this particular change and if I were the sort of person allowed himself to be galled by ex-post-facto decision notifications, I’d be galled. I’d be less galled if I thought any of your thousands of users were polled about it. But it seems a lot more likely someone in the WP decision hierarchy just decided, “Whew! This would just be NEATO! They’ll LOVE it!” and it became a project for someone.

I hate this change. I work from my dashboard. I NEVER go to the wordpress home page, and don’t intend to start now.

If you are trying to drive people to your home page, fine – but you’re not going to drive me there. I’ll find a workaround. This is very much like Google telling me I can’t use Picnik any longer, but must go to google+ to do my processing. I’ll not be doing that, either.

This is plain stupid. I NEVER go the wordpress.com homepage. I ALWAYS use my dashboard and expect my own stats in my own dashboard, not in the wordpress.com common ground.
Usually you guys improve the wordpress experience but this is by no means an improvement. It will only push visiting statistics for the wordpress.com website way up. It is not easy and it is not comfortable for the users.

1. I hardly ever visit wordpress.com so why should I go there to see my stats?

2. You write: You’ll still find your stats in the dashboard for a while, but the My Stats tab on the WordPress.com home page will soon be their permanent home. We hope this makes it easier for you to keep tabs on your traffic!

Uh, no. It won’t make it easier. What it will do is piss me off if you make me go through other steps to find stats for my own blog and take it out of my dashboard.

Your post says, “You’ll still find your stats in the dashboard for a while, but the My Stats tab on the WordPress.com home page will soon be their permanent home.” It’s fine if one can link to their stats on the WordPress.com home page, but I much, much prefer to continue accessing them from the Dashboard. I’m really hoping you will accommodate those who are as pleased as punch with things the way they are.

Please don’t do this. It seems more like a way to force more traffic to the WordPress.com Home page than an effort to make things more convenient for your bloggers, which seems like an insult to people like myself who shell out a lot of money every year for my many blogs. This is a very bad idea that I am strongly against. It will make my job as a blogger much more inconvenient, and I’m glad that so many other people are speaking out against it. I only hope that you listen to everyone to prove that you really care about making the use of WordPress a positive experience. I have no problem with you guys adding stats to your home page, but I am VERY against taking it out of my admin dashboard, which is where it really needs to be.

Honestly, I like my stats right where they are!!
Perhaps you could provide the WP homepage option for those who like the idea.
In general, your changes have been good, or at least easy to adapt.
But this time, I’m with the others who are totally dismayed.

I strongly, and I mean very, very, VERY strongly agree with all of the other commenters who REALLY dislike this new feature and who really want it to go away permanently, and leave things just as they are! If it ain’t broke don’t fix it WordPress! Please do not make things more difficult and convoluted for us. WordPress should be as user-friendly as possible, and I could see many people, myself included, boycotting the WordPress homepage because of this unnecessary and obstructive new feature that seems to just be designed to get more views for the homepage. Such a blatant attempt to get more views for the homepage really pisses me off, and it is really obvious too. That makes it all the more disappointing and anger-inducing. Please roll back this feature, or at the very least, please please please give us all the option of choosing to still see our stats in the regular old place, the same way that you give us the option of choosing whether or not to use some of the other new features that you have added lately. Not all new features are improvements, and sometimes things should be left just as they are! Please leave well enough alone on this one, WordPress. And from what I have seen here so far, I think that the majority of the commenters here are in complete agreement with me, and are echoing the same or similar sentiments!

I’m curious: did anyone say it was hard viewing stats from the dashboard? Where the users asked? Did I miss a survey?

This “improvement” is totally inconsistent with the functions of a dashboard. Everything we need to monitor and run our blogs is on the dashboard except our stats. Why? If convenience is what WP was aiming for then it seems to me that giving people the option of both would have been the way to go. This actually reeks of a move to get us to visit the homepage more. Which I rarely do. Primarily because the Freshly Pressed page features a narrowly defined subset of blogs and content on WP. But that’s another issue entirely. I see that Jet-pack users would still be able to view their stats on the dashboard. Please let us keep our stats in the dashboard.

This is the first of your “improvements” that isn’t one. Disconnecting a crucial feature of the dashboard and putting it somewhere else isn’t logical or practical from the blogger’s point of view. Please don’t make this mandatory, even if you leave it as an option. And I echo an earlier commenter’s (still unanswered question): can we get to the stats from the squiggle thingie on the ribbon at the top of the editing page?

Just to be clear, stats are not going away from the main Dashboard (currently they’re in the right column under Recent Drafts). They’ll also continue be accessible from the sparkline graph in the toolbar.

I for one am totally disappointed in this change, up til now I would have to say that I absolutely thought WP could not be beat, however now I am thinking I am going to have to start doing the unthinkable and start looking for a new blogging host. I love the features usually and I am hoping that if enough people complain you too will see the light, unless you have been totally blinded by power that you cannot see the negative comments now that by far and away out number anything positive on this page. Sad, just So Sad.

Me neither convinces me much, I prefer a thousand times and I think that whatever they say, is the most practical, have the statistics in the blog.

Is it reasonable, logical, who are interested my stats?, To me, obviously, therefore, the logical, rational is that it is I who have them in my own blog.

Having to go around giving a “click” to another location every time you want to check it seems completely logical absurdo.No has any practical or why I have to go out and see something that is mine, that anyone who is interested me to another page?.

Because if there are multiple counters that are there?, Because most of them will place a marker on the main blog page itself and you have always in view.

Hi all
I love this topic because it’s Hot and I also have a lot of fun while read all comments for ‘ next Fresh Site Stats look like ‘ here 🙂
I’ll just wait and keep blogging till I found the Site Stats tab on the WordPress.com Home Page, then I know if it’s Good or Not at all ? 😉

Thanks WordPress for every improvement you (try to) makes.
Keep up the good work

I don’t like it not being available within your own Site actually… It’s basically Forcing people to use your Home Page, and I don’t think that’s good at all… Obviously you guys have your reason for us to Use Your Home Page, but if it’s really about us, then just Forcing us to use it isn’t the way to go

Yes this change is a rather obvious attempt to get us to the WordPress home page and no it clearly isn’t an improvement. On the other hand, the stats are only a click away, and if it helps to support WordPress, – well I’m sure I can cope with it.

i think wordpress stats are great but what’s missing is country visitors. I’d really love to see stats for things like “which countries visit which post the most” this way I can tell what kind of audience I have reading the various posts on my blog.

I worked in the software biz for many years, and I must say this sounds like a case of bored developers with too much time on their hands. I also NEVER go to the WP home page. I ALWAYS access my stats from my page, and I admit I do so often. This means I’ll have to bookmark your site — which I never visit — just to get to my stats.

This makes no sense from a user’s perspective AT ALL. However, from a WP marketing perspective, this smells like an attempt to get more clicks on the WP home page.

Up to now, I had nothing but admiration for WP’s interactions with its users. Up to now … sigh.

It’s clear this is to increase usage of the WordPress home page, as there is no sense in the argument that it makes things easier. Many people I’m sure do not use the WordPress home page, just browsing their own blogs and blogs they like.

Hey, WordPress provides the service and is free to position the stats functionality where the WordPress folk want, but a bit more honesty might have been better?

No harm in saying “we want to increase your visits to the homepage and so your stats will be housed here now.”

Well, I guess I’ll be using the homepage more and am open to finding the benefits of that.

Actually I’ve just realised where this will Really inconvenience me. Getting through this extra navigation on my phone. This will be a definite inconvenience and thinking about it, the result is less “I’ll be using the homepage more” and more “I’ll be using the stats functionality less.”

This sounds really inconvenient. I’m always in my dashboard writing new posts, updating old ones, creating and updating pages and it’s so easy to click on stats. Now I’ll have to go over to the WP homepage?
I’m willing to keep an open mind and try it out. I’ll give it a chance but I’m a little leery.

I don’t like the new display – it is a lot smaller and harder to read than the old one which filled the screen.

Also, I don’t want to be in wordpress home page to find this stuff, I want it on my dashboard where I am much more frequently to be found. Put in both places if you really want, but don’t pull it from the dashboard.

Hmmm. Me, I look at the stats only every now & then. It’s sort of like checking the mail box too often – you get disappointed because the mailman comes once a day; well, with the stats, they don’t suddenly go up or down, so I just look at them curiously every now & then. And alas, alas, I don’t have Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler or Jiggler – I just have hotmail & my wonderful wordpress blog 🙂

But a good idea – tabs are great, for the most commonly accessed sites. WordPress is FOREVER improving things!! Love the joint.

Hmmm. Not sure I like this idea. I did try the new Stats Tab and it took me to a blog I am no longer using. (I have two blogs.) I vote for keeping the stats checking capability on the dashboard as well. Why not in both places?

I’m not sure what you mean with this – you talk about ‘the stats dashboard’, which I guess you mean is the page you get when you click ‘view all’ from the stats box on the home page of the dashboard? If that’s the only thing that’s moving, I’m not that fussed. If you mean you’re removing stats from the dashboard home page – where I can see the ‘right now’, ‘recent comments’, ‘your stuff’ and other boxes, including the ‘stats’ box, then I vote No. That would seem like a clumsy attempt to drive traffic to the frontpage, rather than a useful improvement. That, I think, is what most of the No votes think you mean. If you don’t mean what we think you mean, can you please provide a demo of what the dashboard will look like after this change please?

I will also not like this change. As Andy stated above, “if it ain’t broken”

There is also another reason, a reason that some of you failed to take into consideration I believe. Mobile users will now have added bandwidth usages just to do simple ordinary tasks. Mobile users, such as the Smart Phone or the Rocket/Internet stick users. This will eat a great deal of bandwidth just so you have more traffic to your homepage. To someone sitting in a little or big office with a huge bandwidth allotment, sure, just open another tab. To anyone with a mobile connection, you have just cost them money.

Will the little bar graph on my wordpress toolbar still show up, regardless of the page? If that stays, and I can click on it to go to my main stats page, I will be a little bit happier about this change. Otherwise, because I do check my stats often, staying logged in and going straight to my dashboard, it sounds like a pain.

Why, why, why, why, why? I LOVE my stats being on my dashboard. It’s a STUPID idea to move them. STUPID. I DO visit your homepage regularly to browse through Topics but I won’t if you move my stats there.

HATE this idea!! Sorry, but I don’t go to the WordPress home page, ever. I do everything from my dashboard. Now it just means another step for me, to check on my stats. I think it’s fine to ADD stats to the homepage, but PLEASE don’t take away my stats from the Dashboard!!! That’s just crazy.

Most of your ideas are really good, but not this one. Please reconsider!!

I’m with the majority of responses here, I never go to the WP home page, and so this is another step for me. I will use it – I have to though, don’t I – and see how it goes, we all love our stats, but having another page open is not always what I want. there are times when I have ‘too’ many open as it is. Why can’t it be in both places, as mentioned before.

This is a terrible idea. And it’s not because I’m afraid of change. I already hate that you now give me a post target, (like I need one after already writing over 500 posts?) and treat me like a child that needs a gold star. Seriously, a gold star? But I can ignore that, mostly.

But now this? This does NOT make things easier for me. No. let’s be honest, this is only to benefit the WordPress home page. I suspect the result of this, apart from just annoying us, will be another unexplained stats problem.

How about some needed stuff, like emailing customers when the stats get screwed up, with an actual explanation? How about, oh, I dunno, asking our opinion before making a change that annoys everyone and impacts workflow?

Like all the regular bloggers, I keep one tab open for my blog, stats. post editing, etc all in one place, ongoing all the time. Usability or workflow testing? This brings more clicks, more whitespace, less utility.

Hey Andy,
I hate to be ungrateful for all the hard work the WP folks for for us, but I’m not down with this change. I love the dashboard the way it is. Everything I want to see in on one page. It’s easy to keep that one page bookmarked on my mobile, and I can get to the WP home page from there if I need to. I do look at the WP page every day, mostly for the Freshly Pressed and announcements, but it’s too hard to keep that page with all it’s photos up on a handheld.

If you come back and tell us WP has ditched this idea and is keeping stats on our Dashboard, I will be ecstatic, and virtually kissing your feet.

I can understand why some people will find this inconvenient, but technically you won’t have to go through the “homepage” to get to stats. Seeing the graph in your dashboard and viewing your complete stats are actually different; the latter requires a click as well.

This new stats home will probably be accessible just as easily if you hover over the top left WP logo and click on the “stats” option in the drop-down, right? I mean that’s how you can access “read blogs” and “freshly pressed” as well.

As has been mentioned, I think this should be given a try first. It probably won’t be as bad as you think.

Now…if only those postaweek2012 buttons were available somewhere…(sorry, I know totally unrelated topic. lol)

I don’t like this at all. I rarely have a reason to visit the WordPress home page; it’s very inconvenient for me. You say that it’s faster and easier, your new design on the home page. I find that it really doesn’t make a huge difference. I’m good with it if you want to put the Stats on the home page, but could you also keep it in its original spot for those of us who find that simpler? Thanks.